Attorney sentenced in insurance scam

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A Marina del Rey attorney was sentenced Friday to seven years and eight months in prison for his role in an auto insurance fraud ring that stole about $3 million, officials said.

Robert Belshaw, 56, was found guilty in March of five counts of money laundering and three counts of state income tax evasion.

A co-defendant and ring leader, Solomon Morris Davis, 61, of Rancho Palos Verdes, also was convicted on 20 counts of insurance fraud and conspiracy. He was sentenced in April to 12 years in state prison.

The ring staged accidents to defraud insurance companies.

Prosecutors said Davis set up Total Medical Healthcare in the mid-Wilshire area under the name of his wife, Dr. Jody Hunter-Davis, as part of the scam. She, however, did not practice medicine at the clinic and was not a suspect in the case.

As part of the fraud scheme, the signatures of doctors who worked part-time at the clinic were forged for inflated billings.

Davis recruited Belshaw to run a sham law practice that negotiated the fraudulent billings with insurance companies from September 1999 to April 2003.

Belshaw failed to claim any of his earning on state income tax returns from 1999 to 2001, officials with the state Franchise Tax Board said. Belshaw owes the tax board more than $31,600 in unpaid taxes, penalties, interest and the cost of the investigation, officials said. A restitution hearing has been scheduled for Aug. 12.